i mean crashes to work in central russia in drink over twelve hundred people we've got firsthand accounts in our special report coming up in just a few seconds from now. currency clashes in the euro zone's plight occupy the hearts and minds of financial decision makers meeting here in moscow. and president obama's candidate for defense secretary is still republican some of those who say they don't know enough about the man heading for the pentagon our top stories this.

night from the new center here this is our t.v. the online on screen twenty four hours a day so picture this it's eight fifty one in the morning in a mid-sized city east of the year olds when the sky is lit up by the far of a meteorite about to smash into its final resting place here on earth in this case in the middle of russia last year got a firsthand account from a man who witnessed the dramatic arrival. speak bright like shining across the sky you know blinding brighter than the sun and then it was followed by a huge. explosion on board a minute or so later that broke last and the same the late fixtures were swaying back and forth i don't point to when looking out the window when i saw this giant

streak going across the sky. like a tail cloud of what what had just happened. at that point i knew it was something that came from the sky immediately called one of my teammates who lives in my building and. you know i couldn't get through to him by phone in work so i was a little bit scared at the point well the meteor exploded in the earth's atmosphere resulting in multiple fragments forming near populated areas and surprisingly the incident triggered huge panic among people in the affected region as often as you got a piece going off now reports well this was right about the time when most people were already at work the children were in schools and in kindergartens and all the sudden this extremely bright flash of light one man told me that it actually hurts even looking at it many people managed to actually film what was going on many of these videos are now online here's one actually picturing the moment of one of the

explosions. you saw the sounds of broken glass and all these alarms going off can be truly good and all this it's really like a scene from a sign for a movie but it's real and many were shocked and. especially in the first few hours calling each other to find out what's happening and so many rumors from a jet down to a satellite and even to the start of the end of the world and actually artie's documentary team happened to be in the affected area writes what all this was happening here's how they described it. the feeling was like the earth shattering we thought a military jets may have crashed or that it was some manmade disaster so it was a relief to find out it was a natural phenomenon and while. there i was told that a plane crashed right into our building then we were told that a wall has been partly dislodged and metal structures inside were banned by the blast wave it was

a very scary over twelve hundred people were injured including over two hundred children but thankfully these are minor injuries and related mostly due to all this glass flying around caused by these explosions. well as you can see some spectacular footage there of this initial speculation as to the causes of the flashes in the sky went as far as suggesting a nuclear disaster may be to blame well earlier i discussed with r.t. is lindsey france why exactly people did fear the worst. if you look at the area and its history you begin to understand why people are actually expressing relief that the fact that this was a rock falling from the sky and not a nuclear disaster there are seven nuclear fuel plants in that area in fact during soviet times it was sort of a nuclear playground for scientists where a lot of things were tested and nuclear experiments were done and there were actually two manmade nuclear disasters there one in the fifty's and one in the sixty's so when you're driving to work or picking up your daycare and you see

a huge bright flash and you hear an impact like this imagine what you think if you live there not exactly the place you think mature should be told getting but of course interesting enough this region has experienced this sort of thing before yes it seems to be a magnet it's such a mystery to laymen like us who have no idea why something like the media would be so very attracted to eastern russia to siberia and even to southern russia one of the most famous meteorites ever to hit in one thousand eight the famous. meteor that they hit out in the very far east it cleared two thousand square kilometers of forest land it's shockingly huge and less than twenty years later another another meteor one nine hundred forty seven another and then another ten years ago in siberia these were huge events it would agree on what all the children says about. a meter of their very very slim in fact it's extremely rare to hear of anything

there has been one case of a woman being injured by a meteorite falling through her house this happened in the u.s. state of alabama in the one nine hundred fifty s. she was napping it's all right through the roof hit her on the arm well an asteroid will make a very close approach to earth shortly posting over the pacific ocean that's the events that some people all over the world are watching with interest for during the meteor strike here in russia let's discuss this further with lawrence krauss he's a theoretical physicist cosmologist and a professor. at the school of and space exploration well i've got to ask you this after what happened today here in russia can we really be sure that this asteroid everybody's talking about is going to miss planet earth yes we can be sure and we at this point it's close enough that we know its trajectory very very well and it will be close but no cigar as we like to say here all right and i do predict that then how can you predict that in nobody predicted this meter out that has hit russia what's the difference between the ones a lot bigger than the other after all the one that hit russia while it may seem

large was only ten to thirty times somewhere in that range and you know actually it's kind of interesting about almost ten times as much material is falling on earth every day from space but just in tiny meteorites this is a larger one meteor is this size right the earth maybe a few times a century and then but the but the object in space is much much bigger than that and of course if it impacted on the earth it would just break some windows i'm sure but when it's actually come from lawrence where does this this one today and in russia that come from well one doesn't know why you have to look at the material meteors and asteroids are commenting and then come from the outer part of our solar system perturbations from the planet jupiter and other planets there's a huge. store of of comets asteroids out outside the orbits of jupiter and outside in fact the outer solar system some of them periodically get disturbed by the gravity of the inner planets and get sent inwards some of them are

big balls of ice and become comets others are big balls of rock and the impact on mars and the earth and the moon and. what's fascinating is actually you could if you can collect some of this material some of it is primordial if we actually detect it and we can we can get it right after it falls we can actually measure material that hasn't been processed since a solar system formed four and have billion years ago so for scientists it's a fascinating event. and i'm happy that people weren't killed but if but if some of that material can be recovered it will be incredibly interesting and important for scientists that material not be dangerous anyway pose a threat to the environment or human beings because you remember back in one nine hundred ninety i'm sure you don't remember personally because russia has been talking to before and that was a massive incident affecting siberia and still you can see the environmental impact well yeah but the it but it was a much more massive impact and of course we have a big meteorite crater a meteor crater here and mirrors on it which must have devastated the surrounding

hundreds of miles but this was a pretty small object and most of these things are made of iron and are and and early materials that are relevant the formation of the solar system once it's fallen and hasn't created anything more than a and then i'm a crater it's not going to do any more damage than that so statistically the chance of being killed by a meteorite a very very slim in fact nobody has been killed by one and they according to correct we don't. know and we know if you're right that statistics are such i mean these things are very rare of course it once every hundred million years or so a meteor that's big enough or an asteroid that's big enough to kill the dinosaurs will hit the earth unless we do something about it and actually was kind of interesting is we can with our existing telescopes monitor all the objects in the solar system that might potentially impact on the earth and get it least potentially up to a decade's advance notice which might allow us might allow us to actually do

something about it it sounds like science fiction story but it might be possible but it's it's going to happen now the last one was five hundred years ago they happen about once every hundred million years so it's anyone's bet my way to operate a sleep over the right well or outdoors but you say do something about it what are you talking about intercepting these with with rockets well deflect it yeah i mean you would have to deflate if you caught it early enough you wouldn't have to deflect it very far before you could make an impact meteorite or an asteroid that was good. back on the earth missed the or so it's not science fiction you wouldn't have to do anything really fancy just perhaps have a rock is that either in fact on or or or or was near it and shot its engines and and people are talking about these things because in fact it is a threat and at some point we'll have to deal with it although it's as i say it's not an imminent threat and and the asteroid that's coming as close to the earth as this one is extremely rare and one this size that were to hit the earth might happen once every million years at best but i think i thought yeah that's

comforting because obviously some people live in china banks will be wired that this could be the sign of another one coming it that isn't the case i know at least first of all these two things regrettably unrelated and as i say it ten times it's a single object it didn't most of it didn't even hit the earth it just was destroyed in the atmosphere most meteors are small enough that they could destroy the atmosphere they come down as dust and i wouldn't and i'm sorry about what's happened there but this is not a precursor of anything that comes up you know from being raining down from the sky or any or anything like that lawrence is great to talk to fascinating thanks so much for joining us live on t.v. that's lawrence maxwell cross professor at the school about space exploration thanks a lot thanks again you take care bye bye. well on r.t. dot com live we have updates on the meteor strike that's our web site is online all the time including how some enterprising locals are already cashing in some are trying to sell parts of the crashed media online the most expensive being offered

for ten thousand dollars would you believe that of course even if someone is willing to dip into their pocket for this there's no way to verify whether you're buying a piece of meat or right or just a rusty old stone anyway jokes aside scientists say that the meter we're reporting on today was the largest recorded object to strike the earth's surface in about a century and then we got a few more facts and figures for you here it's estimated weight was about forty tons when it approached the planet at the speed of thirty kilometers per second and then it broke up into smaller pieces as it broke through the atmosphere and experts also say that when it exploded the meteor released a huge amounts of energy and it's been compared with a blast that could be even more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by north korea just a few days ago and specialists are currently examining a crater with a width of six meters which is the point of impact where that meter supposedly

crashed and also another piece supposedly fell into a lake creating this hole in the ice and of course it's extremely cold at the moment there in central russia and that gives you an idea of the surface area in the size of the meteorite. other news now here in a potential currency war the european debt crisis the dominating a meeting of finance chiefs from some of the world's biggest economies here in moscow for russia the gathering is seen as a launch pad for the g twenty summit later this year. has been discussions in the kremlin. in fact a lot of conflicting statements have been said about this talk of the impending looming currency war which has led some folks some market watchers to be quite

confused as to what we'll actually see coming out of this g. twenty talks here in moscow now at the center of the whole controversy of crisis is japan due to its aggressive monetary and fiscal policies it has seen a weakening of the and so what this has resulted in this essentially a clash between the countries very little consensus we did hear from a russian finance minister. who has said that this is certainly an important issue that of currencies that is very much on the table but at the very same time we've seen other world leaders come up and say that you know what currency wars aren't really a threat they're trying to calm down the market to some have even questioned whether japan's actions constitute as a manipulation of the currency basically when a country is in a dire fiscal situation such as of course as we all know many countries are today like japan for instance is one option that a country house is to devalue its currencies and making something like this a twenty dollar bill worth less you can do that by

a variety of means for example me printing cash because why would you want to do that when your currency is worth less if your manufactured goods are cheaper on the market and that gives you a temporary boost in the economy which could be pretty critical in tough times like this now what we've actually seen the fear here is that when a country does that your trading partner strike back they say hey we're going to lower the value of our currency and that sets off a currency war such as the one that we saw in the one nine hundred thirty s. which has led to the great depression now japan insists that it is simply trying to stimulate as kwame it's not doing anything to prompt a full scale currency war of course no country here wants to see that but the reason that we're seeing so much disagreement and so little consensus among the countries is that you know what for example the united states its policy isn't all . different the fed in the u.s. has been printing money like crazy so these developed countries don't really see any incentive in isolating japan in trying to really squeeze down this currency

manipulation issue because they don't want to mess around with their economies essentially so that is really the crux of the issue. they're not his business task has also been closely watching the meeting of the g twenty finance heads. stay with me for the extensive coverage next. libya prepares to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled gadhafi preparations includes setting up roadblocks across the country and nato forces gathering in the capital as a number of those protesting against the new government increases that more after a short break. speak your language. programs and documentaries in arabic it's all here on. reporting from the world talks about six of the p.r.p.

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continues here in the u.s. senate republicans have stalled in the tent by the white house to make chuck hagel e secretary of defense he fell to vote sure his senate has decided to win some time to find out more about him. explains. those who blocked the vote on chuck hagel nomination this thursday know very well that he will eventually be confirmed as defense secretary there are enough votes in the senate to confirm him but the stalling of the vote together with the humiliating treatment that the senators gave chuck hagel two weeks ago at his confirmation hearing this whole process is seen as a message all by itself those lawmakers showed that they could crush anyone who would allow themselves to dissent from washington's core foreign policy beliefs chuck hagel remarks at the confirmation hearing disappointed even his supporters during the hearing which to many seemed like an inclusive mr haygood had to

backtrack on many of the statements he had made before including that war with iran should not be an option including his criticism of israel's actions and some other foreign policy views that he had expressed as a senator so throughout that long and exhausting hearing mr haygood kept apologizing for much of the previous statements he had to take from previous positions he had taken and he bent backwards to show how quote unquote mainstream his views are in the senator's case kept accusing him of not being again quote unquote mainstream enough to get the job chuck hagel swore to defend basically all of washington's foreign policy orthodoxies his confirmation process has been humiliating in many ways than it demonstrated the state of u.s. foreign policy of policy basically intolerant of an ill turgid a vision alternative claude having said all that the president's decision to nominate chuck hagel of course knowing the position chuck hagel had taken before was also seen as a message president obama had said previously that there is too much war talk going on and maybe by nominating chuck hagel he wanted to play down because too many

people here in washington are too eager to talk war just during the confirmation hearing the word war was mentioned one hundred twenty times the word iran one hundred eight times by comparison of ghana's than the war that the u.s. is fighting right now just twenty six mentions of course those are just words but they may very well show how eager many many in washington are to discuss new wars without even having finished the old ones. help is at hand for british m.p.'s who is stressed or depressed online we've got the story of why politicians will soon be getting free mental health treatment without even having to leave westminster. plus a top secret documents surfaces revealing his plans for military involvement in money dot com we lift the lid on the plans of the world's most feared terror network. libya is braced for fresh unrest the second anniversary of the revolution

that toppled gadhafi is being held under the threat of violence security is tight and foreigners leaving all mess the first protests against the current government are expected in benghazi the birthplace of the revolution and to analysts. where libya stands two years after the uprising. to what we have seen over the last two years in libya is that this integration of a new form of some throw control paving the way for the fragmentation of the country into three states at the same time the lawlessness in the country there's an outgrowth of fundamentalism of the chrome on the inside that has over and somali as we have seen over the last couple of months a little bit. more than two months and at the same time we have this but sort of. strife breaking out between the front militias and the country so yes

a lot has changed but not for the better. time now for some other international news in south africa after that superstar oscar pistorius has been formally charged with the murder of his girlfriend the man known as the blade runner will be held in custody until court hearings begin on tuesday model reeva steenkamp was shot dead at the paralympians house on thursday in the suburbs of pretoria. thousands of anti-government protesters have packed a major highway in the bahraini capital of manama that's a day after a sixteen year old protest and a police officer died during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the country's uprising two years ago protests in the country began to demand more freedoms and rights for the shia majority in a nation run by sunny's. activists in syria so at least one hundred fifty rebels and government soldiers have been killed in the last two days of heavy fighting in the northern city of aleppo the attacks began on wednesday as rebels

hit the city's civilian airport in a nearby military airfield control over the international airport or provide a strategic advantage against president assad's forces the conflict in syria has lasted for almost two years now with the death toll already over sixty thousand. the u.s. is funneling money into tracking systems that are threatening to make the very concept to privacy a thing of the past it could mean people's every move being used against them to keep them under surveillance. looks at the future of being watched. the information age was an era nearly everybody in braced by today's surveillance age experts say is a reality almost no one can escape we are five years away in new york from zero privacy from every new yorker being tracked and catalogued and watched and that information being saved for pretty much an indeterminate period of time private investigator steve rom bomb believes america is being landscaped into an

eis wide open society through the advancing market of biometrics technology that uses physiological and behavioral recognition to identify people. a system touted as a national security necessity is being used to build a database where the biometric identity of millions of americans be gathered and stored when you look at crying when you look at terrorism what we're really focusing on is the individual and so if you are interested in reducing crime or reducing terrorism you do have to focus on the individual and biometrics is a way. of connecting the person with a measurement recognition of unwanted visitors face recognition and iris scanning are the current tools of the trade however scientists are reportedly developing new technology aimed at identifying anyone from much greater distances if researchers

are successful the defense department may eventually be able to detect individuals by your shape heartbeat walking patterns and possibly even older long range fingerprint and iris scanning are reportedly also being explored for the u.s. toolbox of tracking are there reasons to have such security devices sure. do i think it's american do i think it's appropriate that somebody can press a button and determine everywhere i've been everything i've done. if we want to know its role and i think that we're entitle to privacy. author and journalist a.j. jacobs recently spent three months documenting every second of his life with a small camera worn like a bluetooth it's remarkable it holds ten hours of video esquire magazine editor at large subscribed to self surveillance for an article about life logging yet he believes the market of high tech cameras and consumer biometric applications will

soon make little brother and equally big concern and i think that we are. we're not going to have a private moment in the future and i always tell people listen if you want to have an extramarital affair you better have it right now because you're going to be able to have it in five years because everything will be tracked your husband or wife will be able to know exactly where you are at all times as companies like apple moved her words fingerprint readers and facial recognition insiders say that consumer electronics will generate an entirely new source of revenue for the biometric industry and industry estimated to bank more than nine billion dollars globally this year however the top cash cow is expected to remain government spending on security will be in the past five years the department of defense has shelled out an estimated three billion dollars on biometric programs. hard to

believe that just ten years ago that concept of facial recognition biometrics surveillance and domestic drones was limited to science fiction movies like minority report marina point nine. that's it for me in the news team for the moment we'll be back with more for in about the whole phenomenon in the meantime coming up after a short break the latest edition of peter lavelle's crosspost there with us for that. helicopters flying through the air day and night rounds of assault rifle ammo popping as the choppers buzz over the land now this unique form of hell of terror is no longer restricted to those in vietnam in the middle east now houston miami residents of the good old usa can get in on the fun houston residents in terror

called nine one one and scrambled for cover and even to schools put on lockdown as the military helicopters participate in a multi-agency training thrill in miami at night in the middle of downtown onlookers caught video on their telephones of blackhawk helicopters pumping loud blank ammo to the people below and maybe even as i speak a flexibly scheduled military drill could be happening in jesper county south carolina you know when i was a kid they tell us about how that year old soviet union would parade their tanks around how there were soldiers all over their oppressed country even in one thousand nine hundred four or will meet in a point to describe our military helicopters would eternally be overhead and a dystopian nightmare world now we're living the nightmare the united states is a huge country there's plenty of room on remote army bases to do your training also last time i checked afghanistan evil which is don't look like downtown miami just who are you training the kill anyways knock off the terror training. but that's

just my opinion. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. chloe and welcome to crossfire where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle five tiny pacific islands one big problem for japan and china.